Sandymount historian, Patrick Hugh Lynch, presented his research at a lecture for the Lord Mayor Eibhlin Byne in the Mansion House on 6th November. He confirmed that the formation and ultimate demise of the Irish Sailors and Soldiers Land Trust contributes to the complex role Irish people played in the Great War of 1914 to 1918.
Patrick has pioneered academic research that previously did not focus on the large numbers of traumatised persons who were placed into civilian life without the ‘therapeutic support mechanisms’.
There were spasmodic expressions of political support for the ex-service community through the activities of Captain W.A Redmond T.D, son of Willie Redmond MP.
Kevin O’Higgins, who was later assassinated, discussed in March of 1927 the location of the Irish National War Memorial: “A tree can but grow from its roots. If you try to substitute others you will have a poor tree. This State has particular origins, and particular roots, and we should not suggest either to ourselves or to people coming here amongst us that it has any other roots. Some men went to France; 50,000 of them did not come back. Others stayed here at home at the time, and joined issue with Dublin Castle and the British administration, and the net result of that was the Truce, the Treaty, and this State.”
During his work at the National Archives in Bishop Street, Patrick unearthed the minutes of the W. T Cosgrave-influenced ‘Committee for the Claims of British Ex-servicemen’. The minutes, report and memorandum for government provide the definitive statement of the relationship between ex-servicemen and Free State authorities.
Land Trust residents in Killester took a test case to the Free State Supreme Court in 1931. The judgement provides a wonderful comment by Justice Johnston delivered in his decision on the Leggette Supreme Court Action in 1933, on the Irish contribution to the Great War of 1914 to 1918: “This case may be said to be the direct outcome of that hideous dislocation of society for which the Great War was, and is, responsible. Amongst those who suffered most from that dislocation, there was a large body of men who had lost their place in the social economy and who required help to gain a footing again– help which could not– which certainly ought not to be regarded as in the nature of a charity, but more in the nature of a right.”
The arrival of Lord Killanin (Thomas Morris) as a Land Trust Trustee lit a slow-burning fuse in the provision of ex-servicemen’s welfare. The Trust originated in the horrors of trench warfare, eventually evolved, through the remaining Trust funds to be used to ‘produce and construct’ a ‘living and working memorial’ to the fallen in the form of restoring the Ballyconnell-Erne canal link and the purchase of George Bernard Shaw’s birthplace in Dublin.
Patrick Hugh Lynch has worked with the Royal British Legion– Republic of Ireland, The Irish National War Memorial Committee and the Department of the Taoiseach, Office of Public Works, on the role of the ex-servicemen in the early years of the Irish Free State.
Patrick was educated at Sandymount High School and has a special interest in official government documents as source material.
Above: A presentation of documents relating to the Irish National War Memorial Gardens to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Archive at the Dublin City Archives. From left: Major-General David O’Morchoe, President, Royal British Legion Republic of Ireland; Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Eibhlin Byrne; Patrick Hugh Lynch; Tom Burke, Chairman, Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association.